Sustainability and Materials

As you all begin to propose material dimensions of performative or geometric strategies, it's useful to think about sustainability at that level as well. For instance, the New York Times is reporting on Co2 and concrete:

Cement and Pollution From Making It: "As cement plants emit 5 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions, the main cause of global warming, making cement means making pollution."

How can we reconcile the potential negative effects of certain material manufacturing and production processes with the desirable ecological effects that all of you are expecting from your systems? If some properties of concrete whether plasticity or weight or some other factor are identified as desirable for performative reasons for instance, we must not only consider the use of other materials and the effect of that selection on the geometry and performance of the system, but we would also have to evaluate a proposed alternate material and its ecological effects as well.

Regardless, this fact about concrete is interesting and certainly demands a finer and more intricate set of geometries when developing the prototype systems into more robust material formations. Surely this speaks to the need for all of you to declare how you will define and evaluate the issue of sustainability within the work.